Tiller vs YNAB: Frequently Asked Questions and Migration Tips
Are you looking to compare Tiller vs YNAB? Here are the most frequently asked questions, plus migration tips for making an informed decision.
Here at Tiller, we think YNAB is a great personal finance service. We respect the company, its mission, and community.
Many of Tiller’s customers came from YNAB, or even use Tiller and YNAB together.
Here are answers to some common questions about Tiller vs YNAB. If you have a specific question about using Tiller in place of YNAB, feel free to post in the Tiller Community, or email support@tillerhq.com.
See an overview of Tiller vs YNAB here.
“In the past, we had tried using Mint, which was helpful for past spending, but not ideal for planning the future. We then tried YNAB, but found it hard to customize and collaborate in. We’ve enjoyed how much we could customize our Tiller budget, using a combination of our own ideas and the modular Tiller Community Solutions add-ons.”
Vineet Prasad
What is Tiller?
Tiller is the easiest way to manage your financial life with the flexibility, privacy, and control of a spreadsheet.
That’s because Tiller automatically imports all your daily spending, income, debts, and account balances directly into Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel. No more data entry, CSV files, or logging into multiple accounts.
Prebuilt templates help you budget, analyze trends, and confidently plan your financial future. Track all your accounts in one place with everything customizable, strict privacy, and no ads.
What can I do with Tiller?
Use Tiller’s automated spreadsheets and daily email for awareness to always know where your money goes, control spending, save more, and optimize cash flow.
Keep financially organized with all your transactions and balances neatly updated in one place.
Analyze trends and confidently plan ahead with prebuilt budgets, templates, and reports.
Get inspired and find help when you need it with the Tiller Community and U.S-based customer support.
Because Tiller is based in spreadsheets, you can use it for nearly any financial task, from household budgeting, paying off debt, tracking expenses, planning for retirement, even running a small business.
What does a Tiller subscription include?
Your annual Tiller subscription includes:
– Tiller Money Feeds for Google Sheets
– Tiller Money Feeds for Microsoft Excel
– Foundation Template for Google Sheets
– Automatic transaction categorization with AutoCat
– Daily email summarizing recent transactions and balances of all linked accounts
– U.S.-based customer support
– Tiller Community
– Dozens of free Tiller Community Solutions templates
Does Tiller offer an app?
Tiller does not currently provide a dedicated smartphone app. However, the Tiller Community has built several mobile solutions, which you can read about here.
Additionally, you can access your spreadsheets with mobile apps for Android and iPhone for Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel.
Finally, you can use Glide to build your own private app powered by your Google Sheets.
How many banks work with Tiller?
Tiller imports data each day from over 21,000 credit unions, banks, credit cards, mortgages, loans, brokerages, and other financial sources.
New banks are added each week. In our experience, the best way to know for certain if your account is compatible with Tiller is by testing it with a free trial. You can easily cancel if your bank isn’t supported. Learn more here.
How much does Tiller cost compared to YNAB?
Tiller is a flat $79/year, with no hidden fees or upgrades.
YNAB is $84/year until December 1, 2021, when it changes to $98.99/year, or $14.99/month (the equivalent of $180/year).
Does Tiller offer a monthly subscription?
Tiller currently offers an annual subscription only, starting with a completely free 30-day trial.
Does Tiller offer a free trial?
Tiller offers a completely free 30-day trial. Your card isn’t charged until the end of your trial. You can easily cancel anytime. Your trial subscription isn’t limited or throttled in any way. Click here to start your free trial.
Does Tiller offer a zero-based budget template?
YNAB encourages its users to “give every dollar a job.” This approach is commonly known as “zero-based budgeting.”
Tiller automates your daily spending, transactions, and balances into a spreadsheet to give you ultimate control over your budget. A Tiller Community Solution, called the Savings Budget, can be added on top of the out-of-the-box Foundation Template from Tiller if you prefer the envelope or zero-sum method.
It makes zero-sum budgeting in a spreadsheet easy. You can allocate unspent funds to any other category, such as “savings” or “vacation” and quickly see how much is left in your envelope. Learn more here.
Also, because Tiller is based in spreadsheets, you can also build your own automated workflow customized for any budgeting style.
Can I use Tiller to collaborate on a budget with my spouse or financial planner?
Yes! Because it’s built on cloud-based spreadsheets, Tiller offers the best real-time and asynchronous collaboration features of any automated personal finance and budgeting tool.
You can easily and securely share your Tiller-powered spreadsheets. You can also restrict access at any time.
Does Tiller include any pre-built reports?
Yes! The Foundation Template includes simple quick insights visualizations. You can browse dozens of other pre-built reports, templates, and workflows in the Tiller Community Solutions gallery. And, of course, you can freely customize or build your own reports to better understand your financial data.
Does Tiller automatically categorize my transactions?
Tiller offers the most customizable and accurate transaction categorization of any automated personal finance service with AutoCat.
You can use AutoCat to categorize some, all, or none of your transactions, 100% based on your custom rules. Read: How Tiller Gives Your Ultimate Control of Your Budget Categories
Chris Lozac’h, 05/14/2021, Google Workspace Marketplace review: “Tiller’s AutoCat feature intelligently categorizes based on simple rules under my full control. Result? It gets it right 100% of the time, leaving a small number of transactions for me to do manually. Of course, those transactions are exactly the ones that need my attention because they fall outside my usual habits. Thanks to Tiller, I have complete control of my financial data, along with complete peace of mind.”
How do I get my YNAB transactions into my Tiller spreadsheets?
It’s easy to export your data transactions from YNAB and import it into a Tiller-powered spreadsheet. YNAB allows you to export your budget as CSV files. The CSV Line Item importer from Tiller Community Solutions simplifies importing and formatting your data for Tiller.
For more details, read about getting your YNAB budget into a Google spreadsheet powered by Tiller.
What happens to the data in my spreadsheet if I cancel my Tiller trial?
You keep any data you’ve imported from your banks with Tiller (or manually imported from YNAB). Your data is yours, period. You also keep any templates you’ve installed from Tiller or the Tiller Community.
Where can I read Tiller reviews from real customers?
You can read reviews here on Tiller’s website, or recent reviews on the Google Workspace Marketplace, where Tiller has a 4.7-star rating and over 37,510 installs.
Do I have to use automated bank syncing with Tiller?
If you strongly prefer a manual workflow, you can still use Tiller’s templates and AutoCat without connecting your banks to your spreadsheets. Some of our subscribers use it this way.
How does Tiller protect my privacy?
Your data is encrypted in transit and at rest with bank-grade 256-bit AES encryption. By default, neither Microsoft nor Google will see your data. Tiller only has read-only access to bank data, and cannot transfer or move money.
Your spreadsheets are private. Tiller doesn’t use or sell your financial data for targeting ads or any other purposes. Tiller works to minimize the data we collect, focusing on data essential to providing core services.
Unusual among personal finance services, no one on Tiller’s team sees your transaction data. This data remains encrypted and private externally and internally.
Tiller is a leader in open banking, an API-based approach where customers access their bank data without sharing usernames or passwords.
Tiller supports 2-Step verification via Google OAuth.
Learn more about security and privacy at Tiller.
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